While he didn't hint at any definitive future plans, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook did admit that all options are on the table for the future of the Mac operating system, including further converging iOS and OS X, as well as potentially running Macs on ARM processors like are found in the iPhone and iPad, or switching iOS to Intel.

An academic paper written by a former Apple intern who now serves as a Core OS engineer at the company has revealed that it was working on a secret experiment to port Mac OS X Snow Leopard to the ARM architecture.

Apple has recently filed for international trademark protections of "macroscalar," its name for various patented optimizations for efficiently executing code on a processor, suggesting it plans to begin commercially promoting its differentiating technology.

The chief executive of ARM, which supplies the reference designs for Apple's custom chips found in the iPhone and iPad, has said he doesn't view Intel's newly unveiled smartphone and tablet chips as competitive.

ARM, the company whose reference designs are used in the chips that power Apple's iPhone and iPad, is expected by industry insiders to carve out a significant presence in the traditional notebook computer market by 2013.

Intel and Google have announced a partnership to enable the use of Android software on Intel's Atom mobile x86-compatible processors, in hopes the chips can wrestle market share from the ARM processor family now dominating mobile devices.

Officials at Apple were at at one point so unsatisfied with power consumption levels of Intel's processors that they threatened to end their partnership with the chipmaker, if the problems were not addressed.